Erdogan gives public workers 45% pay rise days before Turkey election

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday announced a 45 percent pay rise for hundreds of thousands of public workers, days before the country’s parliamentary and presidential elections.

Some 700,000 public sector workers will benefit from the pay rise, the Turkish presidency said Tuesday.

The pay rise came just five days before tightly contested elections, with polls putting challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu slightly ahead of Erdogan.

It also comes amid great economic difficulty in Turkey, where inflation rates have soared in recent years and the lira has crashed on multiple occasions, making the cost of living difficult to contend with for the average Turkish citizen.

Though the move will likely boost Erdogan's popularity as the election draws near, it is not exceptional, with the Turkish government having increased public worker pay several times since economic difficulty hit the country, foreign policy and security analyst Omer Ozkizilcik told The New Arab. The last such pay rise, one of 30 percent, was announced in January.

"This move will help Erdogan, but one has also to say that pay rises are regular in Turkey… a pay rise was expected with or without elections," Ozkizilcik said.

Kilicdaroglu, a retired civil servant, promised to raise pay for civil servants if elected president.

He has attacked Erdogan for a lack of transparency regarding Turkey's economy and financial institutions, and has vowed to set up a task force to investigate the issue.